Caroline Forward

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This year’s Riverside Arts exhibition at Riverside Barn, Little Ouse, brings together 5 artist makers

with their own distinctive styles and media, whose work has connecting threads.

All their work resonates in different ways with the sea, the land, with ancient history, transition and belonging.

 

Using gouache, water soluble graphite and oils Julie Baker’s evocative and atmospheric paintings of the Fens hold a soft luminosity and a sense of the ancient mysticism of the watery landscapes that surround her.

In her loose multi yarn weavings and more recent tapestry weavings, Ditty Dokter embodies identity, sense of place and belonging through her own experience of being a migrant.  Her work around the Brexit vote is a powerful statement of the continuing hostile environment to immigration.

Caroline Forward’s oil and cold wax paintings explore themes of constant change, transformation and loss in fragile shifting coastal geologies, both local and global.  She considers how the processes of becoming and belonging in geological formations reflect the shared processes of land and human experience, both through momentous acts of displacement, as well as gentle shifts.

Rick Forward works in wood with memories and experiences of shoreline structures, as well as referencing architectural styles that have struck chords with him.  His wood sculptures evoke the sense of the ocean.  Other work is a comment on our functional or dysfunctional architectural styles, and a response to him no longer being subject to commission constrictions.

Gordon Chesterman’s paintings celebrate his love of travelling by sea, as well as an interest in natural stone surfaces.  His letterpress prints cover a wide range of subjects and texts.

 

Together, the artworks in the exhibition speak of landscapes and seascapes, near and far, of ancient time and tradition, transition and belonging.  

Stories spoken in words and unspoken, are held in thread, paint, wood and print.​

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Caroline Forward, painter

Inspired by coastal geology, my paintings explore constant change and loss in an environment, what is left behind, preserved or re-formed over centuries

www.carolineforward.co.uk

IG@CarolineForward

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Rick Forward, sculptor

In the process of transitioning to full time sculptor,

I aim to design pieces that either defy function or are purely sculptural.

IG@rickforward

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Gordon Chesterman, letterpress printer

See an old press printing huge posters and

admire a great variety of posters and prints on display.

chestermen@me.com

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Ditty Dokter, tapestry weaver

This year I have further incorporated my experience of fungi and forests into the weaving, as well as continuing to be inspired by the Fens

www.whitwellweaving.co.uk

IG@dittydokter

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Julie Baker, painter

Paintings of skies and fen exploring mood and atmosphere, texture and space

juliebakerart.com

IG@juliebakerart​

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